A new University of Alabama at Birmingham start-up has become one of the few Alabama-based therapeutics companies ever to have received a FastTrack award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Alveolus Bio, founded by Vivek Lal, M.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at UAB Heersink School of Medicine, has received a $2.5 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) FastTrack grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the NIH. Vivek Lal, founder of Alveolus Bio. Alveolus recently received a $2.5 million SBIR FastTrack grant.

The SBIR program funds research and development work at small businesses to support early-stage growth, and SBIR FastTrack grants fund work over the course of three years.

The Alveolus Bio grant, titled “An Inhaled Microbiome-Targeted Biotherapeutic for Treatment of COPD,” will support the company’s work on its lead program for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

“We are thrilled to have received this competitive funding award to support the development of our lead asset for COPD. This is key validation of our science, both current and planned, from the NIH,” Lal said. “These funds will support first-of-its-kind inhaled biotherapeutics development at our company laboratories, in collaboration with labs at UAB.”

Lal said the company is also currently raising a Series A equity financing round to advance its programs into clinical trials.

The technology Alveolus Bio is based on was created at Lal’s UAB lab and is licensed through the UAB Bill L. Harbert Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Alveolus Bio, a drug development company creating FDA-approved inhaled therapeutics for chronic lung diseases, was launched in 2022.